174 Unconscious Memory 



Tekke Turcomans, of whom we read that they live for 

 plunder only, and that each man of them is entirely 

 independent, acknowledging no constituted authority, but 

 that some among them exercise a tacit and undefined 

 influence over the others. Let us suppose these molecules 

 capable of memory, both in their capacity as individuals, 

 and as societies, and able to transmit their memories to 

 their descendants, from the traditions of the dimmest past 

 to the experiences of their own lifetime. Some of these 

 societies will remain simple, as having had no history, but 

 to the greater number unfamiliar, and therefore striking, 

 incidents will from time to time occur, which, when they 

 do not disturb memory so greatly as to kill, wUl leave their 

 impression upon it. The body or society will remember 

 these incidents, and be modified by them in its conduct, 

 and therefore more or less in its internal arrangements, 

 which will tend inevitably to specialisation. This memory 

 of the most striking events of varied lifetimes I maintain, 

 with Professor Hering, to be the differentiating cause, 

 which, accumulated in countless generations, has led up 

 from the amoeba to man. If there had been no such 

 memory, the amoeba of one generation would have exactly 

 resembled the amoeba of the preceding, and a perfect 

 cycle would have been established ; the modifying effects 

 of an additional memory in each generation have made 

 the cycle into a spiral, and into a spiral whose eccentricity, 

 in the outset hardly perceptible, is becoming greater and 

 greater with increasmg longevity and more complex social 

 and mechanical inventions. 



We say that the chicken grows the horny tip to its beak 

 with which it ultimately pecks its way out of its shell, 

 because it remembers having grown it before, and the use 

 it made of it. We say that it made it on the same prin- 

 ciples as a man makes a spade or a hammer, that is to 

 say, as the joint result both of desire and experience. 

 When I say experience, I mean experience not only of 

 what will be wanted, but also of the details of all the 



